Fight Against Human Trafficking in Kosovo

Human trafficking is modern slavery. People use force, lies, and other forms of pressure to take advantage and control someone. The victim does unwilling work, but does not get paid enough or paid at all for their labor. Traffickers can get victims from the Internet, relationships, and fake commercials.

PL4Y International has made the fight against human trafficking an important objective in Kosovo. Throughout its new project, the NGO aims to raise awareness among its volunteers about the risks related to the human trafficking.

Ana Larderet, Project Manager at PL4Y International Kosovo comes back on the issues of the project.

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Ana, since 2009 PL4Y International is promoting sport as a tool for social change in Kosovo, how can sport be a tool to enhance social and economic inclusion of vulnerable people?

Sport can be a very powerful tool to bring together children and youngsters from different backgrounds and cultures. Games have to be organized and prepared carefully in order for participants to play together, learn about each other and understand how everyone is equally important in a team. Mixed teams (boys and girls, children from different communities) are therefore a great mean to bring together people that sometimes never meet. Sport gives confidence to people who can then change their views on others and on themselves as well. This is a first step towards social and hence economic inclusion of vulnerable people.

Could you please give us an update on the implementation of the project on the Fight against Human Trafficking?

The project started in May 2015. Meetings with relevant stakeholders working in the field of Human trafficking allowed us to identify three relevant municipalities where to implement our prevention activities, namely Peja, Fushe Kosove and Gracanica. In the meantime we identified 5 out of 8 volunteers that will be implementing these activities with children in September and October. On 16th of June we organized a one-day inception workshop in Pristina where Marijana Savic, an expert in Human Trafficking from Serbia, discussed the issue of Human Trafficking in Kosovo, analyzed the current situation and drafted with participants key prevention messages. Representatives from Pristina, Peja and Fushe Kosovo municipalities and institutions, the 5 volunteers, as well as partner NGOs attended the workshop. These messages will allow PL4Y to develop sport games based on its innovative “Playdagogy” methodology to convey prevention and anti-discrimination messages to young children (10 to 14 years old).

In September and October, the prevention games will be implemented by the volunteers for the benefit of more than 300 children.

"The challenge will be to have them understand their rights"

What could be the difficulties and challenges you could face during the implementation of the project?

The issue of Human Trafficking is very complex and encompasses many different themes such as forced labor, early forced marriage, gender-based discrimination, children’s rights, etc. Through games and debates, children will learn about the issue. The challenge will be to have them understand their rights and learn about human trafficking and exploitation so that they can react if they face such a situation or witness it.

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Key objectives :

The objectives of the Human Trafficking project are to give key messages to the volunteers, reinforce their capacities and to share values in order to change the mentalities within the different communities.

The expected results are the reinforcement of the dialog between the different communities, the acquisition of skills for the volunteers and the transmission of values to the children.